AMD Launches 850-MHz Duron

Value chip outruns Celeron, and upcoming graphics chip sets will help lower system prices.

Tom Mainelli, PCWorld.com

Advanced Micro Devices is launching its 850-MHz Duron processor this week, taking a speed jump that puts the AMD budget chip 50 MHz ahead of Intel's recently announced 800-MHz Celeron.

The first 850-MHz Duron systems went on sale during the weekend, says Linda Kohout, product marketing manager. In connection with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the Home Shopping Network on January 6 debuted a specially configured Compaq system that uses the new chip, she says. Additional vendors will offer 850-MHz Duron systems in coming weeks, she says.

Integrated Graphics en Route

While the Duron's speed jump is noteworthy, the bigger news from AMD may be that it recently validated two new Duron-ready motherboards featuring cost-conscious integrated-graphics chip sets. Unlike a separate graphics card, which has its own memory, integrated graphics chip sets draw on a system's main memory. Both Via Technologies and SIS are making such chip sets, and motherboards from Asus and MSI have passed muster with AMD, Kohout says.

Those motherboards will soon be on sale, and major vendors will soon offer Duron systems with integrated graphics too, she says. Compaq plans to offer its first integrated-graphics Duron system in the first half of the year, she says.

Even Race With Celeron

Duron PCs have largely outperformed comparable-speed Celeron-based systems in benchmarks. However, the processor's reliance on motherboards with separate--and expensive--graphics cards has slowed its adoption, says Linley Gwennap, principal analyst with The Linley Group. Integrated graphics should help boost sales of the chip, he says.

"This is very important because the rollout of the Duron has been limited," he says. The systems AMD targets with the Duron are in the $800 range, and vendors need to use integrated graphics to meet that price, he says.

The drawback to integrated graphics is a lower graphics performance when compared to systems with stand-alone graphics, he says. So there's a chance the Duron's performance numbers will fall a bit in systems using the new chip sets, he says. That, combined with Intel's recent increase in the Celeron's bus speed from 66 MHz to 100 MHz, will close the performance gap between comparable-speed chips, the analyst predicts. However, the Celeron's 100-MHz bus is still only half that of the Duron, he says.

That faster bus speed, coupled with its Athlon-based architecture, actually makes the Duron perform more on par with Intel's Pentium III chips than its Celeron chips, AMD's Kohout says. "We give customers a computer they want, not just one they can afford."